Al-Itihaad al-Islamiya

al-Itihaad al-Islamiya (AIAI) was an Islamist militant group in Somalia that was active from 1992 to 2006. In the early 1990s, as Somalia fell into disorder following the collapse of Siad Barre's regime, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden funded al-Itihaad and sent foreign militants to train and fight alongside AIAI members. AIAI's goal was to create an Islamic state in East Africa, and it also had elements of a genuine social movement. By 1994, AIAI had established itself in the Somali region of Ethiopia, and it became powerful due to its ties with al-Barakat, a powerful banking, construction, money transfer, and telecommunication company in Somalia, as well as due to its ties to wealthy Saudis. At its height, AIAI had over 1,000 members, and it helped al-Qaeda with the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in 2001, hundreds of trained fighters from the al-Qaeda camp at Ras Kamboni and the AIAI camp at Las Quoay sailed for the safety of tribal areas in Yemen, and AIAI dissolved as an organization in 2006.